“To where?” Fife asked.
“Give it a minute and we’ll both know,” O’Donnell said.
VOYAGER
As the proctor released Voyager from its protection and moved swiftly to reinforce Demeter, Chakotay’s mind stilled. Three massive impacts followed within seconds, jolting the bridge and overloading a few power conduits that belched sparks and fumes above his head. The rough lines of two enemy ships as they passed Voyager following their attack runs were briefly visible on the viewscreen but dissolved into the chaos of new phaser fire coming from three more vessels approaching from different vectors.
“Shields down to eighty percent,” Kim reported.
“Maintain course,” Chakotay said. “How many are in pursuit?”
“Eight,” Kim said. “Four continue to engage Demeter, and the other seven are regrouping around the gateway.”
Another resonant shock sounded through the bridge.
“Return fire,” Chakotay ordered. “Show me Demeter.”
The small, graceful vessel that was now the fleet’s best hope for surviving this encounter moved directly toward a circular distortion of vibrant orange and blue hues. A few of the nearest vessels were breaking off, but the rest were moving into position to form an impenetrable wall between Demeter and the now-visible gateway.
Chakotay did not believe that the proctors protecting Demeter would fail in their mission, but he also understood that the longer they were prevented from entering the gateway, the greater the odds that they would sustain more damage than they could endure.
Demeter’s chances were better than Voyager’s as long as the proctors surrounded them. But he could not leave their fate to chance.
“Helm, bring us about. Set course for the ships blocking the gateway,” Chakotay ordered. Chakotay expected a sharp rebuke from Paris but got none. Doing this was to all but ensure their destruction. To fail to do it was to risk the loss of both ships.
Gwyn followed her orders without hesitation, taking Voyager into a fluid dive and reorienting their heading while simultaneously evading most of the enemy fire. Chakotay smiled grimly. This told him something about those he was fighting. They’d been unprepared for the maneuver. They had decided Voyager was running scared.
They underestimate us, Chakotay thought and hoped fervently they would continue to do so.
A few glancing blows rocked the ship as they moved into a pocket of empty space. Their pursuers had overshot their target, but it wouldn’t take them long to regroup and formulate a new attack pattern.
“Harry, target the three vessels closest to the center of the gateway. Fire torpedoes at will,” Chakotay ordered.
Seconds later, Voyager’s phaser fire—a prelude to the main event—was focused on the three vessels. The shots were centered on the most vulnerable areas of their shields. Because the ships refused to move, the torpedoes that followed were able to penetrate the weakened shields. Six direct hits forced two of the ships out of formation while destroying the third completely.
“Evasive pattern Delta-six,” Chakotay ordered, anticipating the fire about to target Voyager from the rear. Luckily, two vessels that had been gunning for Voyager managed to hit their allies instead, crippling one of them in the process.
“Chakotay, they’re in,” Paris said.
Satisfaction centered the captain again as Demeter slid past the blockade and glided effortlessly into the ring of fire. Once they had done so, the gateway vanished.
One less thing to worry about, for now.
The ship shuddered again as two direct hits on their aft shields pounded them mercilessly.
“Shields at fifty-five percent,” Kim reported.
“Captain,” Sharak said sharply.
Chakotay turned to face the doctor.
“Before it departed, the proctor transmitted a message I cannot translate,” Sharak said.
Chakotay glanced at Sharak’s small monitor and studied the long string of symbols and numbers. They meant nothing to him either.
“Was there a visual transmission to accompany it?” Chakotay asked.
“No,” Sharak said.
“Transmit it to astrometrics,” Chakotay said. “Seven, take a look at this transmisison and translate it, if you can.”
“Understood,” Seven replied over the comm.
Three more ships were closing fast on their position, and Kim scored a direct hit on the lead vessel, shearing off a single, rear-mounted nacelle. The ship spun toward a fiery end, taking out a smaller ship that could not avoid impact in time. The resulting shock wave ripped through Voyager, rattling Chakotay’s teeth in his head as Gwyn tilted the ship upward and an invisible elephant briefly sat in his lap.
“Rerouting additional power to intertial dampeners,” he heard Lasren report, and the effect diminished.
“The slipstream drive is ready, sir,” Paris reminded him. “Demeter made it. We can find them later.”
“I know,” Chakotay said. He still remembered coordinates the proctors had first given them: the location of the home of the Worlds of the First Quadrant. It was a journey of approximately ten thousand light-years, nothing for their advanced propulsions system.
But Chakotay had no way of knowing how much time Demeter might have once they encountered the Worlds of the First Quadrant.
Never mind the fact that going to slipstream velocity in the middle of a battle was an untested maneuver.
“Captain,” Seven called, “I’ve translated the proctor’s message. It’s a harmonic resonance frequency. We can emit it from the main deflector.”
“What does it do?” Paris asked.
“The target coordinates coincide with the gateway’s,” Seven said.
“They gave us the key,” Chakotay realized.
“Captain,” Paris said, sotto voce, “we need to make repairs and find a better time to use that key.”
Chakotay shook his head. “What about Demeter?”
“We’re no help to them dead,” Paris added.
“Then let’s not die,” Chakotay said as he made his decision. “Gwyn, resume course for the gateway. Reinforce forward shields. We have to protect the deflector dish at all costs.”
“Eight ships have locked firing solutions on us,” Kim said.
“Will our shields hold?” Chakotay asked.
“Only if most of them miss,” Kim said.
Paris ordered, “Gwyn, go to full impulse heading one-one-nine-mark-three then execute all stop.”
The flight controller complied so quickly and effortlessly it seemed as if it had been her idea. Seconds later a flurry of torpedoes and phaser fire erupted directly ahead of Voyager. A few badly aimed phasers managed to hit the shields but glanced off them.
“Full impulse, now,” Paris ordered. “Course . . .”
“Got it,” Gwyn said. The abrupt change in course and speed had flummoxed the enemy firing solution. She now had a very small needle to thread to avoid impact with the ships. Kim helped clear the path, targeting the only ship close enough to foil them with a full barrage of phasers. Voyager glided past it so close, Chakotay could see the alien script identifying it on its port hull.
“Deflector ready?” Chakotay asked.
“Aye, sir,” Kim said.
As Gwyn brought the ship into alignment to open the gateway, the largest enemy vessel remaining moved to intercept. Kim targeted them immediately with a torrent of phasers and torpedoes, but their shields held.
The vessel returned the courtesy as six large forward-mounted phaser cannons rained fire on Voyager.
CIF TWELFTH LAMONT
“General Mattings, we have incoming,” JC Eleoate reported.
The general sighed, shaking his head sadly.
They’ll never learn.
“Time to intercept?” Mattings asked as he left the forward research station where he had been enjoying a pleasant conversation with EC Emm-its about his research year spent on Femra and returned to the heart of his ship’s bridge, a circular dat
a station situated between his armaments officer and Lamont’s sensor technicians.
“They will exit the corridor in seventy-five clicks, General,” JP Creak said.
“Let me see ’em,” Mattings requested, and a visual of the doomed ship appeared on his main receiver. “Damn, but she’s a pretty thing,” Mattings said. “Where’s she from?”
“The protectors have not transmitted a designation,” Creak said.
“She’s accompanied?” the general asked, surprised.
“By two of the ancients,” Creak said.
“Two?”
“The integrity of both has been compromised. One is at thirty-seven percent, the other at sixty-one percent.”
“Since when do protectors, even the old ones, operate in tandem?” Mattings demanded.
“Unknown,” Creak said, “but the ancients are always unpredictable.”
The general had thirty clicks left to decide the fate of the incoming vessel. It wouldn’t have taken half that time had she not been so unusually configured.
Most of the ships that managed to breach the main stream and enter the flow were ungainly things, rude constructions of hulls and arms that announced their hostility at first glance. The ship now approaching did not. Her single elongated central hull was lithe and sleek, a little more than six hundred paces long, and looked as if it had been constructed by the hand of a sculptor. She glided like a bird without wings. Her propulsion array was distributed along two wide arcs that almost touched above and below the central hull, attached to it by long cylindrical pylons. They formed a halo around her as she approached, and though Mattings hadn’t attended observations regularly in years, the image struck a reverent cord in him nonetheless.
What a shame, Mattings thought. But before he could give the order to open fire, JC Elioate said, “They are cleared, sir.”
“The protectors transmitted current codes?” Mattings asked in disbelief.
“The initial transmission was out of date, but the reinforcing protectors native to the stream recognized it as friendly,” Elioate said.
“All right,” Mattings said, admittedly relieved. “Stand down weapons. Let’s get ready to say hello.”
VOYAGER
Gwyn did her best to evade the incoming barrage, but there was only so much she could do. Impacts sounded like deafening cannons, inertial dampeners struggled valiantly, but the concussive shocks threw many of the bridge crew to the deck, including Commander Paris, Counselor Cambridge, and Doctor Sharak. Chakotay felt a brief sensation of weightlessness but held fast to the arms of his chair. His right torso slammed into the armrest, and a burning pain shot up his right arm. The shock left him momentarily breathless, but he maintained his focus. Patel’s science station exploded. Had she not already been facedown on the deck, it would have killed her. Smoke, fumes, fire-suppression systems, and emergency lighting set the scene for what Chakotay thought would be his last moments of life.
Chakotay looked over his left shoulder to see Lieutenant Kim still standing his post. “Harry?” Chakotay shouted.
“Shields are at ten percent, sir,” he said.
It was better than Chakotay had expected. “Gwyn, set course away from the gateway. As soon as you have clear coordinates, engage the slipstream drive,” he ordered.
“The deflector is offline, sir,” Kim advised.
Without it, they couldn’t use the slipstream drive. Or the warp drive, for that matter.
Gwyn had begun to execute a sharp port turn, showing the enemy ships approaching from the rear the long view of Voyager’s port nacelles, and several of them took the opportunity to open fire on the easy target. Another series of jolts shook the bridge, and this time, Chakotay was surprised he was still alive to hear them.
At almost the same moment, however, a rolling wall of flame engulfed Voyager from her stern, illuminating the viewscreen briefly enough for Chakotay to see the full extent of the damage to the bridge in a chilling few seconds.
“Hull breaches on decks six through twelve,” Lasren reported. “Force fields are holding.”
As Voyager emerged from the flames, Gwyn was doing her best to outrun several large chunks of debris now following in its wake. Kim called, “The lead vessel blocking the gateway was destroyed, sir. I have ten, no twelve . . . make that twenty new ships emerging from the gateway.”
“Helm, evasive,” Chakotay ordered. The new arrivals had caught the attention of the remaining would-be attackers, and they scattered, ignoring Voyager completely as they moved to engage their new targets.
Chakotay allowed Gwyn to choose her own course as the battle raged around them. As Doctor Sharak tended to the injured, damage control teams began hasty repairs. The viewscreen showed the new vessels making quick work of what remained of the fleet that had attacked the Federation ships. One of the larger vessels and three small ones engaged their warp drives and managed to escape. The rest were easy pickings for the obviously disciplined and well-trained forces that now engaged them.
If those ships turned on Voyager, she could offer no resistance. Shields were all but gone, and their remaining torpedoes weren’t going to make a dent against the newcomers. Chakotay might prolong the inevitable for a minute, two at the most. The best he could do was stand down and pray for mercy.
“All remaining enemy vessels have been destroyed, sir,” Kim advised. “Most of the ships that came through the gateway are retreating back into it.”
“Okay,” Paris said, motioning Sharak aside and wiping the blood pouring from his lower lip onto his sleeve.
“The lead vessel is altering course to pursue us,” Kim noted.
“Helm, bring us about,” Chakotay ordered. “Take all weapons systems offline. Begin transmitting friendship greetings on all frequencies.”
After another few painful seconds of silence, Lasren reported, “The vessel has identified itself as Confederacy Interstellar Fleet Twelfth Lamont. They are hailing us.”
“Put them onscreen,” Chakotay said.
“I’m Ranking General Mattings. You’re Voyager?” the general asked.
He was humanoid, his skin a rich brown shade and deeply creased around his eyes and mouth. The eyes were large black ovals that protruded beneath a demi-lune bony ridge above them. There was no nose to speak of, but two large openings reminiscent of nostrils sat above thin lips. The most unnerving sight—apart from a crisp white uniform all but buried beneath straight lines of shiny metal geometric shapes, some encircled by red and purple ribbons—was his teeth: sharp points reminiscent of a shark’s.
But Chakotay was prepared for Mattings’s appearance. He had seen the faces of the general’s ancestors in the transmission of the proctors on the Worlds of the First Quadrant.
Chakotay rose from his chair, suppressing a grimace, to face the general. He had to remind himself that he should greet them patiently and be open to hearing their explanation for the destruction their ancestors had wrought. The captain also had to remind himself that he had no idea what had become of Demeter, and their survival could depend upon how he handled this moment.
At the forefront of his mind, however, was the reality that this man now held Voyager’s life in his hands.
“I am Captain Chakotay of the Federation Starship Voyager,” he replied. “We’re explorers a long way from home, and we come in peace, seeking the Worlds of the First Quadrant.”
Mattings chortled. “That’s what your Commander O’Donnell said as well.” After a brief pause he added, “Can you make it back to the stream, or do you need a tow?”
“Our systems have been badly damaged, but we can manage under our own power,” Chakotay said.
“Then get a move on, Captain,” Mattings ordered. “I’ll leave a few ships behind in case those bastards try again. They always try again. Idiot children, all of them. But you have been cleared to enter the stream.”
“By ‘stream’ are you referring to the subspace tunnel accessed through the visible aperture?” Chakotay asked.
“They’re streams of a great river, son,” Mattings said. “And this one is the only access to the heart of the Confederacy of the Worlds of the First Quadrant. You say you come in peace. You were brought here by some of our most ancient protectors, and if they say you’re good people, you are.”
“Protectors?” Chakotay asked. “You mean the wave forms?”
“You want to sit here all day playing with your gristle?” Mattings demanded, not unkindly.
“No, General,” Chakotay said. He wasn’t predisposed to like the man, but everything about him suggested he was a leader, a warrior, and maybe even an explorer, comfortable making contact with alien species. He was also worldly, if a little condescending. “Helm, set course for the stream and engage at full impulse.”
“We’ll have your back, Captain,” Mattings replied. “We’ll talk again where the stream ends.”
“Understood. Voyager out,” Chakotay said.
Chakotay turned to Paris. “What do you think?”
“He did not give us Demeter’s status,” Paris said. “Obviously he spoke to O’Donnell. And they did defend us from those ‘bastard children,’ was it?”
“I’d hazard a guess that there are lots of folks out here interested in entering that stream,” Counselor Cambridge mused from the deck where he was now seated.
“So we’re the lucky ones, then?” Paris asked.
“I hope so,” Chakotay said. “If they wanted us dead, we would be.”
“I hope we’re being welcomed as fellow travelers and not taken prisoner,” Paris said.
“We have to make sure Demeter’s still in one piece.” Chakotay turned back to Kim, who stood his post, his face inscrutable. “Harry?” the captain asked.
“I have a good feeling about this,” Harry said.
Paris laughed outright. “This morning you hated these people.”
“These people,” Harry said with emphasis, “just saved our lives. Their ancestors were responsible for great wrongs, but so were ours. I’m curious to see who they are now.”
“So am I, Lieutenant,” Chakotay said, and smiled.
Star Trek: Voyager - 042 - Protectors Page 34
